A hero of the Hundred Years War, Joan of Arc remains a French national heroine six centuries later. As a teenager she heard voices from on high urging her to save France from English domination.

• Born: 1412
• Birthplace: Domrémy, France
• Died: 30 May 1431 (burned at the stake)
• Best Known As: The French heroine who was burned at the stake

When Joan was about 12 years old, she began hearing “voices” of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret believing them to have been sent by God. These voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country from the English and help the dauphin gain the French throne. They told her to cut her hair, dress in man’s uniform and to pick up the arms.

By 1429 the English with the help of their Burgundian allies occupied Paris and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance was minimal due to lack of leadership and a sense of hopelessness. Henry VI of England was claiming the French throne.

Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin’s forces, and then the dauphin himself of her calling. After passing an examination by a board of theologians, she was given troops to command and the rank of captain.

At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led the troops to a miraculous victory over the English. She continued fighting the enemy in other locations along the Loire. Fear of troops under her leadership was so formidable that when she approached Lord Talbot’s army at Patay, most of the English troops and Commander Sir John Fastolfe fled the battlefield. Fastolfe was later stripped of his Order of the Garter for this act of cowardice. Although Lord Talbot stood his ground, he lost the battle and was captured along with a hundred English noblemen and lost 1800 of his soldiers.

Charles VII was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429 in Reims Cathedral. At the coronation, Joan was given a place of honor next to the king. Later, she was ennobled for her services to the country.

In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, to be tried for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her insistence on wearing male clothing.

She was told that for a woman to wear men’s clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn’t yet told her to change, as well as for protection from sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance and finally sealed her fate. Joan was convicted after a lengthy interrogation and on May 30, 1431 she was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.

In 1456 a second trial was held and she was pronounced innocent of the charges against her. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

Joan of Arc achieved a remarkable achievement in her short life of 19 years. In particular she embodied religious devotion with great bravery and humility, her life helped change the course of French history.

The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a “Secret Communications System” to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.

Lamarr and Anthiel received a patent in 1941, but the enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the “spread spectrum” technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible.As is the case with many of the famous women inventors, Lamarr received very little recognition of her innovative talent at the time, but recently she has been showered with praise for her groundbreaking invention.

In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year, Lamarr became the first female recipient of the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors that is dubbed “The Oscar™ of Inventing.”

Proving she was much more than just another pretty face, Lamarr shattered stereotypes and earned a place among the 20th century’s most important women inventors. She truly was a visionary whose technological acumen was far ahead of its time.

Scientist
Born:  25 July 1920
Died:  16 April 1958
Birthplace:  London, England
Nationality:  British
Fields:  X-ray crystallography
Institutions: British Coal Utilisation Research Association
Best known as:  The woman whose crystal studies showed the structure of DNA

Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction studies contributed to the double helix model of the molecular structure of DNA. Franklin had studied physical chemistry at Newnham College, Cambridge. She received her PhD in 1945 for research into the small-scale structures of coal and carbons. As a postdoctoral researcher in Paris, she became familiar with the use of X-ray diffraction as a method for analysing molecular structures. Working at King’s College London, from 1951 to 1953, she applied this technique to DNA. Without her knowledge, one of the resulting X-ray images and a report on her work were passed on to Francis Crick and James Watson at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. This information helped the two Cambridge researchers to develop the double-helix model of DNA.

Later, Franklin investigated other structures, especially the tobacco mosaic virus. Diagnosed with cancer in 1956, Franklin did not live to see the Nobel Prize awarded to Crick, Watson and Maurice Wilkins, her former colleague at King’s. Since her death, there has been debate over whether her contributions to the discovery of the double helix were properly acknowledged. Some of Franklin’s friends and colleagues were particularly enraged by James Watson’s portrayal of her in his 1968 account, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA.

The Roman Catholic nun was the founder of Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in India. All through her life, Mother Teresa helped and served people suffering from various incurable diseases, affected by natural calamities and those unwanted by the society. Love, humanity and helping others selflessly were her reasons to live on Earth.

Information
Born on 26 August 1910
Born in Skopje, Macedonia
Died on 05 September 1997
Nationality Albania

Childhood
Mother Teresa was the youngest child of Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu and was originally named ‘Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu’. Agnes received her first communion at the age of five.

From her childhood, she attended prayers and devoted herself in the worship of the Almighty. When Agnes was eight years old, her father died, because of which, the family faced financial crisis. Drane Bojaxhiu, then, assumed the dual role – of being a mother and a father – and helped her children develop a good character. Under the influence and guidance of her mother and a priest, Agnes decided to carry out missionary work.

Career
Agnes decided to become a Catholic nun, in order to do missionary work and spread the message of love and compassion in the world. In 1928, she became a Catholic nun and changed her name from Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Teresa. Later on, she joined the Irish order ‘The Sisters of Loretto’.

In order to carry out missionary work in India, she was sent to Calcutta on 6th January 1929, where she was appointed as a teacher at St. Mary’s High School. Sister Teresa became Mother Teresa on 24th May 1937, when she made final Profession of Vows to become the ‘Spouse of Jesus for Eternity’. She continued to work as a teacher. In 1944, she was made the Principal of the school.

Global Recognition
Mother Teresa’s service to humanity received worldwide recognition. She stood as the icon of peace, love and compassion. Her determination to serve the poor and needy fetched her about 124 prestigious awards, including ‘Padmashree Award’ (in 1962 from the President of India), ‘John F. Kennedy International Award (1971), ‘Bharat Ratna’ , ‘Order of Merit’ from Queen Elizabeth, ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ (1979), The Pope John XXIII Peace Prize’, ‘Medal of Freedom’ (the highest US Civilian award) and many more.